Wednesday, August 18, 2021

Run this by your lawyers.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3628339/7-steps-to-protect-against-ransomware-related-lawsuits.html#tk.rss_all

7 steps to protect against ransomware-related lawsuits

International ransomware gangs aren't the only people after your enterprise's money. Long after a ransomware attack fades into gloomy history, your organization could face another potentially devastating financial threat: lawyers filing action lawsuits on behalf of clients who may have lost confidential personal or business information to the attackers.





Are all communication tools in violation?

https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/17/zoom_incompatible_with_gdpr_hamburg_warning/

Zoom incompatible with GDPR, claims data protection watchdog for the German city of Hamburg

The acting Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information has officially warned the city's Senate Chancellery not to use the on-demand version of Zoom's videoconferencing software.

Referring to the European Court of Justice Schrems II decision of July 2020, Ulrich Kühn claimed the software violates the EU General Data Protection Directive (GDPR) as "such use is associated with the transmission of personal data to the US."

Neil Brown, director at tech-savvy virtual English law firm decoded.legal, told The Register he interpreted the "somewhat oblique" press release to mean the Hamburg DPA considers that Zoom "does not ensure a level of protection for personal data which is 'essentially equivalent' to that afforded by the GDPR."





A cautionary tale.

https://interestingengineering.com/how-algorithms-are-changing-justice

AI Could Send You to Jail: How Algorithms Are Changing Justice

Forensic AI is shrouded in the trade secrets of the companies who make it. Some want to change that.





Is dry cleaning a viable alternative to brain washing?

https://www.bespacific.com/bad-news-selling-the-story-of-disinformation/

Bad News – Selling the story of disinformation

Harper’s – “…The Commission on Information Disorder is the latest (and most creepily named) addition to a new field of knowledge production that emerged during the Trump years at the juncture of media, academia, and policy research: Big Disinfo. A kind of EPA for content, it seeks to expose the spread of various sorts of “toxicity” on social-media platforms, the downstream effects of this spread, and the platforms’ clumsy, dishonest, and half-hearted attempts to halt it. As an environmental cleanup project, it presumes a harm model of content consumption. Just as, say, smoking causes cancer, consuming bad information must cause changes in belief or behavior that are bad, by some standard. Otherwise, why care what people read and watch?





Perspective.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90666477/facial-recognition-misunderstanding

The great misunderstanding at the core of facial recognition

In this essay, however, I examine how the technology of facial recognition is intertwined with other types of social and political recognition, as well as highlight how technologists’ efforts to “diversify” and “de-bias” facial recognition may actually exacerbate the discriminatory effects that they seek to resolve. Within the field of computer vision, the problem of biased facial recognition has been interpreted as a call to build more inclusive datasets and models. I argue that instead, researchers should critically interrogate what can’t or shouldn’t be recognized by computer vision.

Ultimately, any computer-vision project is based on the premise that a person’s outsides can tell us something definitive about their insides. These are systems based solely on appearance, rather than identity, solidarity, or belonging. And while facial recognition may seem futuristic, the technology is fundamentally backward-looking, since its functioning depends on images of past selves and outmoded ways of classifying people. Looking forward, instead of asking how to make facial recognition better, perhaps the question should be: how do we want to be recognized?





A resource.

https://www.i-programmer.info/news/150-training-a-education/14802-microsofts-machine-learning-for-beginners.html

Microsoft's Machine Learning for Beginners

A free, self-paced online course about Machine Learning is on offer from Microsoft's Azure Cloud Advocates. Its 24-lesson curriculum, expected to take 12-weeks to complete is targeted at those new to Machine Learning.



(Related) Another resource.

https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/18/mcubed_webcast_series_ep_one/

Free machine-learning lessons from The Register – starting with Benford’s distribution

Tune in on the first Thursday of every month to learn about algorithms, tools, and services from field experts

In our new, free MCubed webcast series, we’ll bring you up to speed with the latest ML development-related tools, libraries, and cloud service news, before jumping into hand-selected expert talks. Through those, practitioners will help you freshen up on the basics, share serviceable advice from their day to day work, and provide insight into the issues they’re trying to solve.

The goal of every session is to have you walk away with some nuggets of knowledge useful enough to enhance your daily machine-learning practice. Professor Mark Whitehorn will kick off the new format on September 2, 2021 at 11am BST with an introduction to Benford’s distribution.

We’re looking forward to seeing you on September 2: Sign up here and we will remind you on the day.





Tools for the smartphone addict?

https://www.makeuseof.com/beginners-guide-lapdocks-how-to-use-your-phone-as-a-laptop/

A Beginner’s Guide to Lapdocks: How to Use Your Phone as a Laptop

With smartphones becoming increasingly powerful, why do we still lug around heavy laptops or additional hardware when our pocket devices perform the same functions as computers?

Enter the lapdock—a device you can use to transform your smartphone into a laptop. With a lapdock, you could eliminate the need for a traditional computer.

Read on to learn about lapdocks, including what they are, how to use them, and how they could replace your laptop.





Some tools & techniques that may be useful in other types of research?

https://www.bespacific.com/investigative-tactics-that-reporters-love/

Investigative Tactics That Reporters Love

Global Investigative Journalism Network: “Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to interview dozens of investigative journalists about their favorite tools and techniques. In a series of stories, their tips have shown our global audience of reporters that there are scores of muckraking tactics that can help their reporting, and that effective digital tools constantly emerge that can help them dig. But again and again, these top muckrakers point to roughly two dozen techniques that assist in almost all of their investigations, and consistently impress with their effectiveness. Most of these require no cost or computer science skills, and some involve the simplest adjustments to allow investigators to access tough sources or find elusive evidence. In part two of this piece next week, I’ll list the dozen tools that have emerged as common favorites for many reporters. But here, in part one, I list the dozen tactics and approaches that leading investigative journalists commonly rave about…”



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